JLBC The Art of Public Speaking
The efficiency of knowledge is like that of a man in one crucial respect: its attitude toward its subject is the first source of its power. A text may be full of good ideas well expressed, but if its writer views his subject from the wrong angle, even his excellent advice may prove to be ineffective.
This website stands or falls by its authors' attitude toward its subject. Suppose the best way to teach oneself or others to speak effectively in public is to fill the mind with rules and to set up fixed standards for the interpretation of thought, the utterance of language, the making of gestures, and all the rest. In that case, this website will be limited in value to such stray ideas throughout its posts as may prove helpful to the reader--as an effort to enforce a group of principles, it must be reckoned a failure because it is then untrue.
Therefore, it is essential for those who take up this website with an open mind to see clearly at the out-start what is the thought that once underlies and is built through this structure. In plain words, it is this:
JLBC Cadets Training in public speaking is not a matter of externals--primarily; it is not a matter of imitation--fundamentally; it is not a matter of conformity to standards--at all. Public speaking is public utterance, public issuance, of the man himself; therefore, the first thing in time and importance is that the man should be, think, and feel things worthy of being given forth. Unless there is something of value within, no training tricks can ever make the talker anything more than a machine--albeit a highly perfected machine--for the delivery of other men's goods. So self-development is fundamental in our plan.
The second principle lies close to the first: The man must enthrone his will to rule over his thought, his feelings, and all his physical powers so that the outer self may give perfect, unhampered expression to the inner. It is futile, we assert, to lay down systems of rules for voice culture, intonation, gesture, and whatnot unless these two principles of having something to say and making the will sovereign have at least begun to make themselves felt in the life.
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